While the whole of Switzerland waits impatiently for the new children’s book, we launch an unusual but appealing activation measure: A pre-Sale campaign exclusively for grandparents.

Three weeks before the official sales launch, only grandparents are able to buy the sought-after children's book and look forward to a guaranteed visit from the little ones. We use targeted communication measures to announce the start of the advance sale among our older target audience. Checking that customers really were grandparents was done in an endearing way. In shops, senior citizens could confirm their grandparent status with family photos, children’s drawings or even by bringing their grandchild to the bookshop. In online stores too, only grandparents can order the book by making a digital promise that they are indeed grandparents in real life.

In order to bring the idea to even more senior citizens, grandchildren could also let their grandparents know about the exclusive advance sale via the campaign website, by text message, WhatsApp or e-mail.

Over 80 Swiss bookshops taking part in the campaign were delighted with the massive response from grandparents from the very first day of the advance sale. The exclusive advance sale catapulted our children’s book to the top of the bestseller list on the very first day. The charming campaign was reported on both nationally and internationally. The additional publicity provided the advance sale with an extra boost, and the first edition (40.000 copies) was sold out after just 12 days. The most important thing, however, is that our unique campaign brought families and generations together.

By turning grandparents into heroes for their grandchildren.

The strategy was to limit the sales to grandparents only. And by limiting it, everyone was talking about it. That was the strategic beauty of this approach: bringing families and generations together and helping them enjoy time in each other’s company thanks to the new children’s book. By combining this strategy with our target audience of just the older generation, we came up with the charming idea of a grandparents-only advance sale.

The first children’s book with the two likeable ibexes Gian and Giachen was at the top of the Swiss bestseller list for more than 30 weeks last year. This success looks set to continue with the new, second book, for which a new activation idea was sought. The main aim was to make sure that the second volume also made it to the top of the children’s books bestseller list.